


the beginning of a beautiful friendship

by mahariels



Series: all your bridges are burning [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Mercenaries, Pre-Relationship, gratuitous casablanca reference, maccready's inner narration is still filthy, rosa solomon wasteland hobo extraordinaire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 07:05:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5281382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahariels/pseuds/mahariels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fuck her. <i>Fuck</i> her. Of course she knows he’s desperate and she’s taking advantage. But lucky for her, he’s fucking desperate and willing to be taken advantage of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the beginning of a beautiful friendship

If there’s one place in the Commonwealth where it sure as hell doesn’t pay to be tired and down on your luck, it’s Goodneighbor. Sure, there are worse places to lose your edge. But that’d be the sort of situation where a feral rips you to pieces before you can blink, or a suicider explodes in your face before you can figure out where the fuck the goddamn ticking’s coming from. In Goodneighbor it’s different. In Goodneighbor, they can tell, but they’re too fucking civilized to make a play for it right away. They circle like sharks instead, waiting for  you to show your belly at the wrong fucking moment.

MacCready can’t afford not to be paid. Not now. Not when Duncan’s waiting for him back home and time is _running the fuck out_.

With his endless fucking optimism (hah fucking hah) he thought it’d be easier to find work here, rather than in the wilds of the Commonwealth. Surely there were marks in Goodneighbor who needed a hired gun. Who could use his services. He _thought_ Winlock and Barnes would find the neighborhood watch too much fucking trouble and he wouldn’t have to see either of their shit-sucking ugly-ass faces anymore. He’s thought a lot of things in his life, but Robert Joseph MacCready is beginning to find out that many of them are even more wrong than he could have imagined. And that’s how he ends up in the back room of the Third Rail with his head in his hands and the sounds of Winlock’s jackboots ringing in his ears. _Fuck_.

(At the corner of his hearing, from somewhere out in the main bar, he can hear a drifter snort derisively, “What? Another one of you mercs looking for MacCready? He’s in the back room,” but if there’s someone _else_ out to fuck up his day, he doesn’t have the motherfucking attention to spare for them right this moment.)

The two of them are standing in front of him, looking down at him like he’s a particularly foul piece of dogshit that happened to attach itself to the tread of their boots. And because they’re assholes they don’t say anything right away, waiting for him to squirm and piss himself like the rest of their targets probably do, no doubt. But he’s not just another target; he’s Robert Joseph MacCready, and he looks up at the impassive faces of his former comrades and wonders how long he’d last if he spat in both of their faces and pulled his rifle on them.

He might be able to take out Barnes, who’s slower and a little dumber, before they managed to figure out what was happening but Winlock’s standing right there and MacCready’s not sure if he could get the second shot out in time. And woe fucking betide him if Winlock moved at precisely the wrong moments which, knowing his unbelievable fucking luck, is exactly what would happen. 

_Keep it cool, MacCready, they ain’t done shit to you yet._

“Can’t say I’m surprised to find you in a dump like this, MacCready,” Winlock’s gravelly voice is saying.

“I was wondering how long it would take your bloodhounds to track me down, Winlock,” MacCready’s mouth is running on fucking autopilot. He can vaguely remember his mother telling him, several lifetimes ago, that his mouth was going to be the death of him. She hasn’t been proven right yet, but MacCready’s willing to bet that she’s got it predicted about as well as anyone. “It’s been almost three months… don’t tell me you’re getting rusty. Should we take this outside?”

Winlock, the bastard, has the stones to laugh. A little chuckle, just to show he’s playing nice. “It ain’t like that. I’m just here to deliver a message.”

“In case you forgot, I left the gunners for good.”

“Yeah, I heard. But you’re still taking jobs in the Commonwealth. That isn’t gonna work for us,” Winlock says firmly.

“I don’t take orders from you. Not anymore,” MacCready snaps. There’s a whole fucking host of reasons why and he’s remembering all of them at this moment. The cruelty of the Gunners to their prey; the weird lockstep fucking devotion to the group. The blood type tattoos they pushed at you. The brands. Enough to make him nauseous. “So why don’t you take your girlfriend and walk outta here while you still can.” If there’s one thing MacCready’s good at, besides his way around a gun, it’s bravado. You don’t get to be the mayor at age ten without it. You don’t survive your first foray into Big Town without it. You don’t make it to twenty-two without it, even when you’ve lost almost everything else that ever mattered to you.

“What?” Barnes growls. “Winlock, _tell_ me we don’t have to listen to this shit.”

“Listen up, MacCready,” Winlock says with that disgusting, infuriating _patience_. “The only reason we haven’t filled your body full of bullets is that we don’t want a war with Goodneighbor. See, we respect other peoples’ boundaries… we know how to play the game. It’s something _you_ never learned.”

Thank fuck he never learned it. “Glad to have disappointed you.” Although he can’t afford to take his eyes off of the Gunners, he can see, out of the very corner of his vision, that a woman’s stepped into the back room. She has her hand on her gun, but she’s not a Gunner. At least she’s not in Gunner gear. Doesn’t hold herself like one. He can’t afford to worry about her, not fucking now, can’t afford to even decide if she’s a threat or not.

“You can play the tough guy all you want. But if we hear you’re still operating inside Gunner territory, all bets are off. You got that?” There’s a sneer in Winlock’s words because of fucking course he knows MacCready can’t afford to go up against him and Barnes. Can’t challenge the Gunners. He’s just another fucking mark now; it doesn’t matter what he can do. Doesn’t matter that they know he’s _good_. He fucking hates it, the feeling of _helplessness_.

All he says is: “You finished?”

“Yeah… we’re finished. Come on, Barnes.” And with that, they’re gone. 

He’s all on edge still, fucking jittery as if he just took a hit of jet. But he’s alive. ‘Swhat he always tells himself after a disaster, that: _you’re alive. You’re alive. You’re fucking_ alive. 

And that fucking woman’s still standing there, watching him with one eyebrow raised and a fucking modded to hell .50 cal sniper rifle slung comfortably in her arms. ( _Of course you noticed the gun first_ , he can hear Lucy sigh, somewhere in the back of his memory.) The woman holding it ain’t anything special, though. Average height. Wiry muscle. She’s wearing a beat up orange jumpsuit a size too big for her and mismatched, patched-to-hell armor. Face scarred, thin white faded lines on her lip and slashing across her eye. She’s smudged with dirt and blood and covered in freckles, and she’s got the stupidest looking knit cap pulled down over her head, hiding her hair. An incongruous pair of eyeglasses perches on a beaked nose as she stares down at him over the edge of them. She looks like she’s either going to shoot him, or lecture him. 

By this time in the day, he thinks he’d prefer being shot.

“Look, lady,” MacCready snaps, because his day hasn’t been fucking trying enough and he doesn’t have the patience to entertain any curious drifter that happens to find herself in Goodneighbor. “If you’re preaching about the Atom, or looking for a friend, you’ve got the wrong guy. If you need a hired gun… then maybe we can talk.”

To his surprise, the impassive mouth actually tilts up at the edge in something that could have been a smile in another world where “smile” had a completely different meaning from the one he’s used to. “Maybe,” she says, and her voice is… weirdly throaty. Deep for a woman’s. Bit scratchy, like she’s not used to talking that much. (He doesn’t _like_ it, that would be fucking stupid.) “Why don’t you tell me who those guys were first.” She looks him straight in the fucking eye now, daring him to offer an excuse for the way he practically rolled over on his belly and begged them for forgiveness.

“A couple of morons looking to climb up the ladder of success by stepping on everyone else on the way up,” he mutters, unsure if he’s more frustrated with her or with himself; “You shouldn’t be surprised though, that’s how it goes when you run with the Gunners.”

“Never heard of the Gunners,” she said, totally nonplussed at the name.

He stares at her for a minute, trying to make her out. There’s no fucking way she’s from around here, but she’s deep enough into Commonwealth territory that it doesn’t even make sense. She would’ve had to have crossed paths with them at some point, so she’s either really fucking lucky or really fucking stupid. Or both, which would be just _his_ luck. He decides, because he’s a nice guy like that, to humor her. Just in case she got knocked on the head and her brains aren’t all there or something. “They’re one of the biggest gangs in the Commonwealth?” She shakes her head, and he snorts derisively. “Got a rep for being crazy… you know, tightly wound, you’d think they were a cult or something. Stuck with them for a while ‘cause the money was good, but I never fit in. That’s why I made a clean break and started flying solo. Now, what about you? How do I know I won’t end up with a bullet in my back?”

It’s a bold move, assuming she wants to hire him when she hasn’t even _really_ expressed any interest, but fuck he needs the caps and _fuck_ he needs to get out of Goodneighbor now, preferably with someone he can throw in front of Winlock and Barnes if they catch up with him at the wrong time. Slow ‘em down somewhat. Christ, Duncan would be ashamed of him.

But instead of telling him to fuck off like he would’ve (again, several lifetimes ago) she does that thing with her mouth again, the not-really-a-smile. “You don’t. That’s part of the risk, right?”

“Can’t argue with that.” She really doesn’t look like a Gunner conscript and they’re not exactly known for their subtlety. It ain’t Winlock’s style to plant an assassin like that, not when he could steal all of the glory for himself. She’s probably legit. Probably. And anyone as battered and dusty as she is certainly doesn’t have friends in high places. Certainly she’s not fucking with anyone who’d care about _him_ … Probably. “I tell you what. Price is 250 caps… up front. And there’s no room for bargaining. What do you say?”

Her mouth twitches again (there’s a particularly large, dark freckle at the edge where her lips meet) and expressionless brown eyes regard him steadily, barely blinking. “Everything’s negotiable,” she drawls. “Would you take 200?”

Fuck her. _Fuck_ her. Of course she knows he’s desperate and she’s taking advantage. But lucky for her, he’s fucking desperate and willing to be taken advantage of. “You drive a hard bargain, but you just bought yourself an extra gun. All right, Boss — let’s get out of here.”

She hands him the 200 caps (sweet, sweet caps) and they get out of there. He follows her through the winding death trap streets around Goodneighbor, and he’s watching her very fucking closely to see how she handles herself. Whether he’s going to be a hired gun or a babysitter. He’s done both, and although they pay the same, being a babysitter is not fucking worth it. There’s exactly one small, helpless person in the entire fucking world he’s willing to walk through the Commonwealth, and that person’s name starts and ends with Duncan Robert MacCready. 

The Goodneighbor environs are a good way to get a handle on a person. The narrow ruined roads and heaps of debris make it easy to set up ambushes and choke points, and many’s the day he left the neon nightmare of its front gates to find a turret erected that definitely wasn’t there the day before. Super mutants love it. Raiders love it. Anyone who can’t hack it is going to get blown to little bloody bits before he even has to learn their names, which suits him just fine. After all, he’s already got her caps in his pocket.

But she can hold her own, the boss. She cradles her rifle like she was born to it, or at the very least, that she’s spent some serious time with it recently. When they crouch to hug the wall, she actually knows how not to present a target with her head. And he wouldn’t admit it but he gets a little hard — just a _little_ bit — when one of her shots slices the head off a feral neatly in half from 200 paces and she doesn’t even fucking blink. It’s not that he’s a particularly sick fuck, but he appreciates craftsmanship when he sees it. And she doesn’t talk much. No… after a day or so of killing, he thinks he and the boss are probably going to get along just fine.

They set up for the night in one of the highest floors of a teetering ruin. He’s got a clear vantage point from the windows, but also through a gaping hole in the floor. Anyone tries to sneak up on them, he’ll take care of it. Or if he’s sleeping, the Boss will, so long as she doesn’t turn on him after all. But somehow, he doesn’t think that’s what’s going to happen. She’s taciturn, kind of a stone cold bitch, but she killed a suicider for him while he was tangling with a mutie hound, before he even figured out which direction it was coming from, and that’s something. And she doesn’t mind when he can’t shut his fucking mouth. She might not answer, but she lets him talk.

They haven’t lit a fire; no need to attract attention, But safe enough that he can get away with lighting a cigarette and that first exhale is the lightest he’s felt for the last few weeks. Since leaving the Gunners, really. Luckily it’s warm enough that he doesn’t mind knocking out on the chair while she takes the floor. Or he wouldn’t, if she wasn’t watching him with that strange not-smile again.“The f—what’s so funny?” 

“You know,” she says, “you’re the only person I’ve met so far who’s only wanted money.”

He doesn’t ask what she means by _so far_ and it occurs to him just then that he doesn’t even know the Boss’ name. “Well, I’m a reasonable guy,” he says instead.

“Well, I appreciate it,” the Boss replies. She sounds, strangely, a little tired. A noise, as close to a laugh as the thing she does with her mouth is to a smile. “At least I know what the hell you want. It’s almost refreshing. No grandmothers who need escorting through a ghoul nest. No settlements that need protecting. Wanted to thank you.”

It’s the most words she’s strung together at a time since he’s met her and to be honest he’s not entirely sure how to respond. So he says, “Don’t mention it.”

There is a long silence. Long enough that it’s going to start straying from _comfortable_ to _very uncomfortable_ in the breadth of a fucking second. And then the Boss looks up and nods, short and sharp. “Rosa.”

“MacCready,” he says like a fucking idiot, because she already knows his name.

“I think,” she says, and this time, the expression on her face could be called a smile by any fucking definition in any fucking language, “that this is going to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”


End file.
